


White Christmas (2008)

by lucasquinn



Series: Sharing a World [12]
Category: Primeval, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, M/M, dragon!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucasquinn/pseuds/lucasquinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cutter and Stephen spend the holidays rediscovering Cutter’s past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Christmas (2008)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a big jump into the AU world. Primeval but actually set in the future of the Temeraire Universe. There are still anomalies, there's still a team and there is even a research centre (yet unnamed). There has also been a slight twist in evolution somewhere along the line and one more sentient species shares the Earth with humans, dragons. Thanks to fredbassett all fics so far posted have been betaed.
> 
> One last thing, I might not have mentioned it in the intro but the number next to the title is the year the story takes place in since I tend to jump around in the timeline with this.
> 
> Written as a Secret Santa for x_bellaitalia_x on lj back in 2008!

Stephen rubbed his eyes and stretched out to search for his sunglasses in the glove compartment, carefully keeping an eye on the snowy road at the same time. A brief glance at the passenger seat confirmed that Cutter was still sleeping peacefully. The younger man could not help but smile, after weeks when he’d seemed constantly on edge the Professor finally seemed to be relaxing around them again.

Stephen slid the yellow-tinted pilot glasses on and sighed in relief. It had been snowing for several weeks now and the entire Scottish countryside looked like a picture perfect postcard but as the sun had come out, the glare of it against the pure white of the snow had come close to giving him a headache.

A few miles down the road they came to an intersection and Stephen had to pull over to the side of the road to check his map. It had been close to five years since the last time he’d been here with Cutter, and thanks to the snow any landmarks he still remembered had become part of the smooth white blanket that was covering everything in sight.

Next to him, Cutter stirred and stretched out before sitting up and rubbing his eyes. The soft sleepy smile that followed made Stephen’s stomach flip flop embarrassingly in his belly and he did his best to ignore it.

“Hey, we should be there in another half an hour or so I think,” the young man said, with a smile of his own before nodding to the back seat of the Hilux. “There’s still some coffee in the thermos if you want it.”

By the time Stephen had figured out which road to take, Nick was happily cradling a lukewarm cup of black coffee like it was a lifeline. As they kept on driving, Cutter watched the countryside go by, eyes searching futilely for familiar landscapes as they came closer to his grandfather’s house.

“Nothing looks familiar yet?” asked Stephen gently, as he noticed Cutter pensive look.

“Nothing yet,” Cutter replied softly, eyes still fixed on the snow covered countryside. “In my memories, my grandfather passed away when I was only a little boy and my father and uncle sold the house soon after that.” The professor turned to Stephen and offered him a quick smile. “It’s been over thirty years for me since I’ve last visited, so I’m not really expecting to remember much.”

It had been hard to believe at first, when Cutter had come back through the Forest of Dean’s anomaly babbling about alternative universes and different worlds but his reaction at the sight of the Chandrakant, SAS dragon guarding the anomaly at the time, had been so strong as to erase anyone’s doubt about the professor’s words being some sort of a joke.

Stephen could not hold back the soft chuckle at the memory of Nick Cutter falling back on his arse with his jaw basically sweeping the floor as he stared at the barely 15 ton lightweight dragon. Chandrakant had politely asked Cutter if he was all right and that had been the last straw for the man. He had passed out cold, to everyone’s utter surprise, the little dragon’s first and foremost.

“Stop it, I know what you’re thinking about,” grumbled Cutter, as he glared at him. “I’d love to see what you would have done in my place. I’m actually glad it was Chandra there and not a heavy-weight like Potentialis or I might have had a stroke.” The glare turned into a small smile and Stephen’s chuckle got louder until it became a full throated laugh. Cutter tried to hold back but after a few moments watching the younger man’s carefree laugh he couldn’t help himself.

.~.~.~

Cutter stood in front of the large house, more an old farmhouse than a proper cottage, , and looked up at the white washed walls. They matched the rest of the landscape, a seemingly endless blanket of snow muffling sounds and turning the Scottish hillside into a perfect postcard landscape.

As they had driven through the surrounding countryside, Cutter had finally started feeling a sense of familiarity, vague memories of warm days spent playing amongst the hills and cool nights sitting next to his grandfather in front of the crackling fire returning to him. As Stephen had pulled up in front of the large house, he had been able to remember exactly the sound his father’s old car tires made over the gravel of the yard, even though the ground was covered with a good foot of snow now.

The inside of the place had awoken even more memories, some jarring starkly with reality, since the last he’d seen of the house had been in the early seventies. Stephen had assured him that the kitchen still looked exactly the way it had been when his grandfather was alive, its wood burning stove exactly the same as Cutter remembered it.

Cutter’s musings were brusquely interrupted by a clump of snow hitting the back of his head, freezing snowflakes making their way down the collar of his coat and inside his jumper. He barely had the chance to turn around to look for his attacker when another ball hit him square in the face, transforming him into an odd – and frozen – impersonation of his patron saint.

Spluttering, he cleared his mouth of the snow and wiped the wet flakes from his eyes, revealing a smiling if somewhat guilty-looking Stephen.

“Sorry, you were just standing there and well, it was too good an opportunity to pass up,” the younger man said, with a grin.

Cutter’s stomach did a brief flip-flop as the mischievous smile lit up the younger man’s face. The Stephen he remembered tended to smile a lot more often and he’d not realised how much he missed it till now. It didn’t mean that it would stop him from giving the lad a little payback, though.

“You do realise, Stephen…” Cutter’s face broke into a grin of his own as he leaned down to grab a handful of snow and moved closer without taking his eyes off the other man. “… that this requires retribution, right?”

Stephen started backing away, the smile only getting wider. “Come on Cutter, are you sure you want to do this? I wouldn’t want you to get too soaked, at your age you might get the sniffles and I wouldn’t want you to have a miserable Christmas after all the driving…” The rest of the sentence was lost into the snowball that hit the younger man square in the face. Stephen was still spluttering and wiping the flakes off his face by the time the next one hit and within moments things had degenerated into a full snow fight.

Nearly an hour later, both men were completely soaked and frozen stiff from head to toe but they were both still laughing as they walked back into the house. At the end, neither man had kept the upper hand for very long, Stephen’s lean muscles and healthier lifestyle not enough to beat the other man’s cunning and, rather suspicious in Stephen’s opinion, suddenly recovered memories of the land around the house.

“Go on and get changed, Stephen, you might be younger than me but I’ve always dealt better than you with this kind of temperature and I don’t think four years in the rain forest have changed that any,” Nick said with a smile, as he pulled off the wet jumper and let it fall to the hallway floor, where it landed with a squelch.

Stephen only rolled his eyes and picked up the piece of clothing before kicking his shoes off. “There’d better be hot chocolate by the time I’m back and no excuse about not remembering where things are, not with the way you kicked my arse out there,” the younger man smiled, blue lips still trembling due to the near-constant shivering which had brought their snow war to an end.

“Hurry up, you’ll need your hot chocolate if you want to stop shaking like a bloody leaf.” Cutter smiled and walked into the kitchen, waiting until the younger man had climbed up to the bedroom before peeling his own soaked trousers and underwear and replacing them a dry pair of cords from the bag that was still in the living room. Socks and tee shirt followed suit on top of the wet pile, before he wandered towards the kitchen barefoot, rolling up the sleeves of his favourite flannel shirt.

Making hot chocolate only required a couple of attempts and by the time Stephen came back downstairs, Cutter was sitting Indian style on the rug which covered a large portion of the living room, a crackling fire at his back and two large mugs of chocolate on the floor next to him.

“Feeling a bit better, lad?” he asked with a smile which Stephen found himself returning easily.

“Much better,” Stephen said, as he flopped down on the rug next to the older man, the heat of the fire immediately starting to seep through his sweater. He picked up the steaming beverage and cradled it between still-cold hands, closing his eyes and sighing softly after taking the first sip.

“Hmm, this is great, thank you,” Stephen smiled. “Aren’t you glad you gave in to Micanimus’ nagging about coming here for the holidays now?” The dragon had started dropping hints about it as soon as Cutter had started getting over the ‘anomaly shock’ of walking into a world where humans shared their everyday lives with dragons, a world he had no recollection of since whatever change in the timeline had caused it had happened while he was inside the Forest of Dean’s anomaly. By the time the beginning of December had come around, the hints had turned into a full blown constant nagging until Cutter’s final excuse about not remembering the way to the old house had collapsed when Stephen offered to go with him.

“That dragon is the most stubborn creature I’ve ever met in my life. I think he was ready to fly me here himself, all the way over from London.” Nick chuckled and lay back on the soft rug, still sipping his hot chocolate as he propped himself up on one elbow. His eyes didn’t leave Stephen’s face, noticing how the soft firelight made him look younger.

Stephen chuckled as well, the bright grin lighting up his face in a way that Cutter had always found irresistible.

“He reminds me of someone I know actually; with a lot less scales and more stubble but with the same charming Scottish accent.” The younger man’s grin turned mischievous and Cutter found himself wanting to lean closer and see what it would feel like to brush his lips against it.

Then as Stephen’s words registered, Cutter sat up in mock outrage. “I’m nowhere near as obnoxious as Mica when I’m right.” This time Stephen’s chuckle turned into a full throated laugh and Cutter had the decency to look a little abashed. “Alright, fine, maybe I am sometimes,” he added with a small grin of his own.

In the comfortable silence than followed, both men slowly finished their hot chocolate, setting the mugs on the floor then laying back to enjoy the heat of the fire. Cutter realised that for the first time in the weeks since he’d stepped into this strange new world, he was finally relaxing, and the fact that he had Stephen to thank for this was no great surprise.

“Yes, I’m very glad I let Mica talked me into coming up here,” Cutter said suddenly, his soft baritone voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. “But I’m even happier that you decided to come as well.”

Stephen pushed himself up on one elbow, blue eyes scrutinising Cutter’s serious face. The older man looked straight ahead for a long moment, as if lost in his thoughts, before turning his gaze to meet Stephen’s.

“I would have been a piss-poor friend to make you spend Christmas alone in this old house though, right?” the young man replied with a small smile that held nothing of his usual confidence.

“You’ve always been nothing but the best of friends to me, Stephen,” Cutter said with a smile. “I don’t say it nowhere near often enough but thanks for putting up with me, especially with all madness of the last few weeks.”

Stephen shrugged and grinned, the usual cheekiness and confidence back in full force. “Someone has to and at least I know how to handle you, most of the time.”

Cutter cuffed him gently over the head and laughed.

Christmas was still two days away and they had the house to themselves for another week after that. Maybe this vacation was going to be a lot more interesting than he had first thought, and it certainly beat the way he had originally planned to spend the holidays, at home alone. He promised himself he’d show Stephen just how grateful he was for his company.

As they both settled back on the soft rug, Cutter smiled. Maybe if things worked out the way he hoped they would, he’d have a lot more ways to show Stephen his appreciation.


End file.
